Influence
The book was the first to present the then novel argument that excessively tight monetary policy by the Federal Reserve following the boom of the 1920s turned an otherwise normal recession into the Great Depression of the 1930s. Previously, the consensus of economists was that loss of investor and consumer confidence following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 was the primary cause of the Great Depression.
The chapter on the Great Depression, entitled "The Great Contraction, 1929–33", was published as a stand-alone paperback in 1965.
The Monetary History was lauded as one of the most influential economics books of the twentieth century by the Cato Institute book forum in 2003. It was also cited with approval in a 2002 speech by then-Federal Reserve board member Ben Bernanke stating "the direct and indirect influences of the Monetary History on contemporary monetary economics would be difficult to overstate", and again in a 2004 speech as "transform the debate about the Great Depression".
Read more about this topic: A Monetary History Of The United States
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Terri Apter (20th century)